Euro Agency’s Costs Weigh Down Profits

Two sets of six figure costs have given performance marketing agency, Netbooster, a small setback in the half-yearly results for its 2013 fiscal year that were announced today.

Netbooster managed a turnover of €64.8 million during the first six months of 2013, down €0.5 million year-on-year. EBITDA of €0.4 million was recorded in the same period, a drop of €0.9 million on the first half of last year.

While gross margin came to €16.9 million, up 2.5%, operating cash flow suffered and went into the negative by €0.3 million for the half year. However, Netbooster has reported net debt is stable at €6.4 million.

An Overhead Impact

A one-off expense of around €0.35 million linked to the previous year and an increase to overhead costs of €0.3 million?, mostly attributable to human resources, are said to be the two causes of Netbooster’s struggling bottom line.

Management at Netbooster, which snapped up Tradedoubler’s search assets in 2011, have stated that they are confident of a turnaround in the latter half of 2013. Chief executive Tim Ringle confirmed that actions have been taken to improve finances.

“The first half year of 2013 was clearly dominated by our ongoing work to restructure the Group from a client, management, product and also financial perspective,” Ringle said. “NetBooster has to become more focused on key clients, core products, quality delivery and the increase of innovation and efficiency throughout most of the countries we work in.“

The agency’s mid-term target has been pinpointed as 20% EBITDA/gross margin. Netbooster believes this is achievable in the next two years.

Simon Holland

Simon is the news and research reporter at Existem. Previously a technology journalist, he now spends his time investigating both future and developing trends in performance marketing whilst producing editorial content for performancein.com.